SkyCaddie SG2.5

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Not that Sky Golf would ever tell you anything, or admit they know...my 3 cents:

The 2.5 uses the new software/firmware as SG5 uses. The SG3 and 4 used Magellan based software, internal antenna and generally were p.o.s My SG3 went in three times to be serviced, was extremely inaccuarate at times, and thankfully bounced off cart path and died immediately (about as durable as a champagne glass)...so, I bought SG5 with temp cart mount (fortunately, it was mispriced at 29 instead of $69) and it's awesome. Deadly accurate, rechargable battery has lasted over 12 hours (3.5 rounds), wasn't dead but charged up again just in case.

Hopefully the 2.5 is just SG5 without color screen, thought it was a gimmick, have to admit it's pretty sweet. Also, same courses on SG5 (compared to SG3) now have greater details (ie yards to carry falso front, a ridge in green, mound, etc).

If don't have the cash or want to pay for color, 2.5 shoudl be the ticket. Avoid SG3 or 4 like the stinky sheet it is.

OK. You guys have motivated me to take the SG4 back and get the SG2.5. I don't have the receipt since it was a gift, but I should be able to take it back and Golfsmith will issue a store credit for the difference. Maybe I can score a fairway wood or another wedge for the bag.

I would take the SG4 back and get an iGolf... Skygolf is **** everyone because they have the market share, and having to pay a subscription fee each year is nonsense. So is having to buy the $30.00 one plus another $10.00 to add a state, or $50.00 for US. Right now I live on the border of MI and OH, so it's $40.00 minimum, but if I want to use it on vacation in NC... $50.00. This is BS... with igolf you download every course in the area, and favorite and possible vacation destinations... then you let the subscription lapse. With igolf you can also share courses with friends. Only drawback for iGolf is no inteligreen, but 80% of the time I'm approaching the green in a manner where I don't need it, and the other 20% of the time and I can accurately guess using the information in front of me.

For those reading this topic trying to decide which GPS system to go with I felt I should add my almost entirely positive experiences with SkyGolf products. I have been a SkyGolf customer almost continuously since they first launched their PDA model many moons ago. I used the Palm Vx with attached GPS receiver for a couple years before moving on to the SG2 and subsequently a brief period with an SG3.

The PDA model was pretty much the perfect Golf GPS system. It allowed you to purchase individual professionally mapped courses for a one-time fee of either $4.95 or $9.95 depending on whether or not they included intelligreen mapping. Those courses were then available to you indefinitely and there was no annual fee. Furthermore you could adapt those downloaded courses to your tastes by adding additional targets. In addition to all that you could track stats for each club hit, number of putts, fairways and greens hit, birdies, pars etc per round and upload all that info to the desktop software for further analysis. It was an outstanding system and the only real drawbacks were that it was bulky and the GPS receivers of the time were not very fast to lock on to satellites and could lose lock more easily than the current generation of GPS hardware. Of course that is of no real relevance to a current Golf GPS shopper but I point it out to show that SkyGolf has not ignored such features but in my opinion have abandoned them in an effort to make the systems easier to use.

The SG2 came along with better GPS locking and a simpler interface and I gladly moved to that model. I really didn't care that the stats tracking features were lost as I had stopped using them anyway since it took too much time and focus away from just playing the game. The one feature that I wish they had kept was the ability to add targets to the professionally mapped courses. However, those course are already very well mapped and I have not found it to be a serious problem. YMMV of course.

As mentioned above I also had a brief stint with an SG3 before I swapped it out for a Pinseeker 1500 TE. That decision had nothing to do with any performance problems with the SG3 but instead was more about a desire to get accurate pin yardages. I don't doubt the reported problems with the SG3/4 GPS performance but the interface was a great upgrade from the SG2. The ability to see more targets onscreen at once was a great improvement and being able to tap on a target and get remaining yardage to the center was also a very useful step up. I'm not certain but I don't believe any other current Golf GPS system does that. It seems clear from the many negative posts about the SG3/4 hardware however that SkyGolf definitely slipped up with those models and so it would seem prudent to avoid purchasing an SG3/4 now that the SG2.5 and SG5 have come along. I for one find it refreshing that SkyGolf have seemingly addressed the hardware problems so quickly and moved on to better products. If I'm correct it took them just 12 months to make that happen. Just my opinion but I think that's a good response to a slip-up in their hardware roadmap.

I recently picked up an SG5 as a compliment to my Pinseeker 1500 since I found there are many situations that only a GPS system can handle, but I still want to retain the ability to get accurate pin yardages - particularly inside 150 yards. I started reading this topic as part of my research to decide which of the many GPS options to go with and I yet again went with SkyGolf for the following reasons :

1. The courses are professionally mapped on the ground not from satellite photos. It doesn't take a scientist to realise the obvious benefits in terms of accuracy there.

2. The mappings include many many targets. I just went through each hole on my home courses and they have probably 95% of anything I would want mapped.

3. The intelligreen feature in my experience is indispensable. I don't believe anyone else has this and frankly I never want another GPS system without it.

4. The pro-front yardage option is very useful to me when I play a tournament with provided pinsheets.

5. The center yardage from any selected target can be very helpful for determining strategy. No more guesswork involved.

There are more pros on my list but those 5 are the hotlist for me. I will gladly pay $30 per year for the quality and reliability of the course data. Given how much we all spend on equipment , green fees, memberships etc, $30 is entirely insignificant IMHO.

I realize that many have had problems with customer service with SkyGolf and I don't doubt those posters whatsoever. I just wanted to point out that I have had a great experience with their staff. At one point I dragged my older PDA model out of mothballs to set it up for a golf buddy of mine and I realized that I had lost the software CD. It was not available for download from the website so I had to contact customer service. They went to a lot of trouble to grab an ISO image of a CD they had in hand and post it on an FTP server for me to download. Now this was no longer a supported product but they went the extra mile to get me back up and running again. I have rarely experienced that level of service anywhere. Like I said before however - this was just my experience and I don't doubt the problems others have reported. My experience was the only time I have ever had to contact them and I have no reason to expect I'll need to call anytime soon for my new SG5. For me, a superior product is worth any potential headache a most likely unnecessary customer service call may create.

Anyway, I'm not trying to lessen anyone else's comments, merely adding my own experience for those reading and trying to make a purchase decision.

I just bought the SG5 after doing alot of reading and research online. From what I gathered, the 2 and the 5 were the best models, and the 3 and 4 had problems. I guess it makes sense to make improvements on the 2 since it is regarded as a really good model. I agree with an above poster that you may see the 3 and 4 phased out and they keep the 2.5 and 5.

This is true for now, but I wouldn't necessarily count on this for the future. iGolf could change this at any time with a software update.

No, not really... my iGolf will always work with the courses that I have already downloaded and stored on my CPU. Unlike skycaddie, with igolf I store the course fies on my CPU and not in a "skybank". And my decvice itself holds 40.

Yes, they could make later models that work different, or change the download system, but if I download 100 courses right now, and those are the only courses I ever intend to play... then I'm all set... period.

My only point is that I didn't like the way skycaddie forced you to rely on them so much... not letting you map more than F C B and having to store courses on their system, and paying for every state. It was all too gimicky for me. But I will say this... there product is nice, the interface is great, and intelligreen can't be beat. But, overall... I like the igolf... I want someone to compete with skycaddie, and I think they are the best ones to do so.

I have been thinking about the 2.5 but I have never owned any GPS device. Lots of good info in this topic. I do have one question, does the purchase price include the 1st years subscription or is that an additional fee?

I have been thinking about the 2.5 but I have never owned any GPS device. Lots of good info in this topic. I do have one question, does the purchase price include the 1st years subscription or is that an additional fee?

There's no subscription included in the purchase price. You will need to subscribe and download your courses before playing. I think you can map your own course without the subscription but I've never done that so I may be wrong.

The courses are professionally mapped on the ground not from satellite photos. It doesn't take a scientist to realise the obvious benefits in terms of accuracy there.

Actually... it does.

And because of the assumptions that have been bandied about in a few GPS threads here, I asked one... a client of ours at the USGS. His response was that the IKONOS and QuickBird sensor images available from the major satellite imaging sources are very accurate (.8m - 1m on IKONOS, and up to .5m on QuickBird).

So, given the inherit random accuracy of +/- 3m of a human being using a hand held device to map a course, satellite imagery can indeed be more accurate. Of course this will depend on the images/software the other GPS vendors are using to map their courses.

The courses are professionally mapped on the ground not from satellite photos. It doesn't take a scientist to realise the obvious benefits in terms of accuracy there.

Actually... it does.

And because of the assumptions that have been bandied about in a few GPS threads here, I asked one... a client of ours at the USGS. His response was that the IKONOS and QuickBird sensor images available from the major satellite imaging sources are very accurate (.8m - 1m on IKONOS, and up to .5m on QuickBird).

So, given the inherit random accuracy of +/- 3m of a human being using a hand held device to map a course, satellite imagery can indeed be more accurate. Of course this will depend on the images/software the other GPS vendors are using to map their courses.

Below is a sample of a QuickBird sensor image. Pretty amazing stuff.

I don't doubt that satellite imagery can indeed be accurate. However, to assume that those folks mapping courses using satellite imagery are doing so in a manner that takes full advantage of this accuracy is optimistic at best in my view. Given the large number of courses that they need to map and the fact that doing so is a tedious low-skilled job (assuming we're dealing with some piece of software where you just point and click at the positions on the images), I would guess that the job can frequently be rushed, resulting in less-than-optimal results. This is all conjecture on my part of course and I could well be out of place and doing an injustice to those performing this mapping process. Given that the exact procedure in use by those mapping via imagery is not available to me I can only make the most reasonable judgement possible. That still remains that someone walking the course with a GPS receiver will get better results than someone clicking on an image.

I don't doubt that satellite imagery can indeed be accurate. However, to assume that those folks mapping courses using satellite imagery are doing so in a manner that takes full advantage of this accuracy is optimistic at best in my view. Given the large number of courses that they need to map and the fact that doing so is a tedious low-skilled job (assuming we're dealing with some piece of software where you just point and click at the positions on the images), I would guess that the job can frequently be rushed, resulting in less-than-optimal results. This is all conjecture on my part of course and I could well be out of place and doing an injustice to those performing this mapping process. Given that the exact procedure in use by those mapping via imagery is not available to me I can only make the most reasonable judgement possible. That still remains that someone walking the course with a GPS receiver will get better results than someone clicking on an image.

really... and you don't think some jackhole walking the course might take shortcuts. Pointing on the right spot takes no additional effort, walking to an exact location actually requires legwork. Do you think the people walking the course are highly paid, skilled professionals, probably not. Also, all I know, is that my iGolf has been spot on, on the courses I've been to, and if something was wrong... I could edit the file, unlike skycaddie.

I would tend to agree although I also have no real knowledge on the subject....seems to me that the obvious targets ie bunkers, water etc should be pretty accurate from the air if done with care. I would be more concerned with things like layups to plateaus or flat spots etc that someone on the ground would deem important layups or hills/gulleys to avoid etc...things that from that picture may not be as obvious or detectable....I can think of several points on my course that from the air don't look like much trouble....but believe me...been at some of those places and they are a whole lot different and menacing at eye level!!

No, not really... my iGolf will always work with the courses that I have already downloaded and stored on my CPU. ...

I'm glad you are so sure about this, but you cannot know that the course files do not have an expiration date set into the file. Do you?

Second, do you mind shrinking that picture down some? It's ridiculous, and does really prove anything. We all have Google Earth and know what satellite imagery looks like.

Lastly, you guys can be fine with courses mapped by imagery, I'm sure they are alright. But of all the complaints you can make about SG, inaccurate course files are not one of them. I played yesterday with the iGolf & SG2.5 side by side for reference. Mostly they were right on, but several of the greens the iGolf was off by 2-3 yards, and off by 7 on one.

as to the files having expiraion dates... that would spell a lawsuit for iGolf... they specifically state that this is NOT the case

accuracy... my point was you can edit the points if they are wrong... and I am sure skygolf is accurate as well... I was just saying that they are the ones who started this whole "we have someone walk the course" nonsense to try to frighten people away from the other less expensive instruments. Both methods work just fine.

Lastly, you guys can be fine with courses mapped by imagery, I'm sure they are alright. But of all the complaints you can make about SG, inaccurate course files are not one of them. I played yesterday with the iGolf & SG2.5 side by side for reference. Mostly they were right on, but several of the greens the iGolf was off by 2-3 yards, and off by 7 on one.

That's precisely what I was afraid of when making my decision. Granted you can correct those errors with the iGolf and maybe other systems but I'd rather not have to worry about such flaws. Incidentally I have never once noticed an error of anything more than a couple yards with any SkyCaddie I've played with. That encompasses at least 30+ courses I've played regularly over the years.

I was just saying that they are the ones who started this whole "we have someone walk the course" nonsense to try to frighten people away from the other less expensive instruments. Both methods work just fine.

I gotta say that's a rather sweeping and unsubstantiated accusation to fire at SkyGolf. You're assuming that they did not look at the options and choose to have people physically walk the course in an effort to get what they deemed to be the best possible results. Calling their approach to mapping nonsense when everyone seems to agree that their mappings are reliably accurate is somewhat foolish. It is undoubtedly more expensive to physically map a course than to do so via satellite imagery. For you to suggest they chose to do this for 16,000+ courses purely as propaganda against their competitors (who incidentally were nowhere to be found when SkyGolf started their course mapping) is dare I say it, nonsense !! /wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />

I gotta say that's a rather sweeping and unsubstantiated accusation to fire at SkyGolf.... Calling their approach to mapping nonsense when everyone seems to agree that their mappings are reliably accurate is somewhat foolish.

I never said their approach was nonsense... only their advertisement that says satellite mapping is inaccurate is nonsense. My point is that BOTH are accurate. BOTH, not one or the other...

Also, as far as I know (can't remember where I read this)... there has been recent advances in technology that make satellite mapping work, when SKygolf started it was more accurate to walk the course, but now... BOTH work similarly well. My point... Skygolf should just tell people how accurate their way is... not bash another way.

Maybe Skygolf is worried that with satellite imaging now being availableand accurate there will be no reason to charge exorbiant subscription fees, and other companies might start undercutting them... oh wait, that's already happening. Competition is a GREAT thing.. and eventually the companies that adapt and incorprate the best ideas into delivering a product that is cost effective and of the highest quality will win out. Hopefully 2-3 three companies will emerge with near equal market shares... and this will benefit the consumer in cost and quality.

That is why I dislike Skygolf stepping on all the smaller companies (by making unsubstantiated claims)... it would be better for us, the consumer, if a few survived.

I started reading this topic as part of my research to decide which of the many GPS options to go with and I yet again went with SkyGolf for the following reasons :

3. The intelligreen feature in my experience is indispensable. I don't believe anyone else has this and frankly I never want another GPS system without it.

Actually the GPS Golf Guru has this feature. They do use satellite to map courses, but they map the shape of the green for each hole. On their screen they do not rotate the green, but rather they have a mark at the front and back of the green showing your actual approach angle, and the actual shape of the green. One thing that is interesting with the GPS Golf Guru is that when you user map a course you can map the green this way. An email I got from a rep stated that you start at the front of the green andwalk at a normal pace around the green, the device captures a coordinate about every second and records the shape of the green that way. No other prodict has that feature. Some may not like the screen on the bottom, but I guess that is personal preference.

I am still trying to decide between SG2.5 and GPS Golf Guru. The latter is offering free subscription until Jan, 2011, and their normal price of $29/year covers all courses, not just one state. It is about $50 cheaper that SG2.5, so with three years of US coverage membership that is like $200 in savings overall. That is a big reason why I am leaning towards that product.

I've narrowed it down to these two as well....just wish the Guru had about 10,000 more courses already mapped and their OEM mapped editing capabilities already in place. I really don't need or really want all the extras...I just want yardage and shot distance as accurate as possible.

Guru does not have most of the courses I will be playing in near future and having to map my own especially when on trips where I may only play the course once is no good. I know....the more customers, the quicker they are likely to add courses...but having to wait on a $200-$300 investment is kinda hard to do...especially in this market...seems like somebody has a new product every week. I'm afraid their hardware will be obsolete before they get enough courses mapped.

Actually the GPS Golf Guru has this feature. They do use satellite to map courses, but they map the shape of the green for each hole. On their screen they do not rotate the green, but rather they have a mark at the front and back of the green showing your actual approach angle, and the actual shape of the green. One thing that is interesting with the GPS Golf Guru is that when you user map a course you can map the green this way. An email I got from a rep stated that you start at the front of the green andwalk at a normal pace around the green, the device captures a coordinate about every second and records the shape of the green that way. No other prodict has that feature. Some may not like the screen on the bottom, but I guess that is personal preference.

I must confess I had not looked at the GolfGuru until your post. I am impressed. I do find it funny that they claim the iGolf and all the SkyCaddies are not designed for Golf (I guess they mean the hardware is being reused from GPS Nav applications) but then their "designed for Golf" unit puts the buttons above the screen !! I just don't get that part and think it would make it awkward to use. That said however, the GolfGuru is the most promising newcomer I've seen. It will be interesting to see if they survive, and subsequently if they keep all those stats features for future models. I'll definitely be keeping tuned to these guys and their current offering looks like a great deal at $239. If I wasn't trying to make a living from this dang game I might have returned the SG5 and given them a try. For now I'll let others be the guinea pigs /smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' /> Thanks for the headsup !!

I do find it funny that they claim the iGolf and all the SkyCaddies are not designed for Golf (I guess they mean the hardware is being reused from GPS Nav applications) but then their "designed for Golf" unit puts the buttons above the screen !! I just don't get that part and think it would make it awkward to use.

BrendanH, I posted a mini-review of the Guru in that thread regarding this very same thing. Some owners said that they don't mind it, but I thought it was absolutely terrible.

I do find it funny that they claim the iGolf and all the SkyCaddies are not designed for Golf (I guess they mean the hardware is being reused from GPS Nav applications) but then their "designed for Golf" unit puts the buttons above the screen !! I just don't get that part and think it would make it awkward to use.

BrendanH, I posted a mini-review of the Guru in that thread regarding this very same thing. Some owners said that they don't mind it, but I thought it was absolutely terrible.

Steve, I read you review, but you would not even try it on the course because you didn't like the design. You played today, all you had to do is bring that out as well and see how much it interefered, then maybe some of us on the fence would know. Maybe it is totally unuseable with that design, but maybe not. If it is just as accurate as the SG2.5 or SG5 then it is a viable option for a lot of people being a lot cheaper.

Steve, I read you review, but you would not even try it on the course because you didn't like the design. You played today, all you had to do is bring that out as well and see how much it interefered, then maybe some of us on the fence would know. Maybe it is totally unuseable with that design, but maybe not. If it is just as accurate as the SG2.5 or SG5 then it is a viable option for a lot of people being a lot cheaper.

You're right, but the truth is it just wouldn't get a fair shake from me out on the course. I didn't like it that much. The navigation "joystick" part feels cheap, and is hard to use without mashing it the wrong way. The unit felt cheap in my hand. I hate to bash them, because I did not use the product on the course, and it may very well fill a niche of golfers. I really wanted to like the Guru, and maybe that's part of the problem. I just ended up being so disappointed with the whole thing.

Chat with their online tech support says yes....same receiver...see below....

Richard: Hello. How may I assist you?

you: SG2.5 vs 5.0...do they have the same receiver as dentoted in this press release??

you: At the heart of the SkyCaddie SG5’s rich functionality is a custom-engineered GPS receiver from Swiss GPS receiver IP manufacturer u-blox. A cooperative engineering effort between u-blox and SkyGolf resulted in the advanced positioning technology TruePoint™. In the SkyCaddie SG5, TruePoint™ provides positioning accurate to under a meter and an ultra-fast time to first fix in a small, easy to use, hand-held device with extremely low power requirements. This breakthrough technology provides dramatically more accurate position calculations than conventional GPS receivers used in consumer GPS devices designed for less demanding applications such as hiking, hunting, and boating. The positional jitter and drift, which are inherent to other GPS positioning products and processes, is virtually eliminated, resulting in reproducible accuracy exceptional in consumer GPS devices.

Richard: Yes. They are comparable in that regard.

you: OK...thanks

Other conversations yielded the only major difference is black/white vs. color and the SG2.5 only displays 3 lines of targets/screen while the SG5 has 4 because it has a larger screen